Decision on travellers’ pitches plan for village

A controversial scheme to build travellers’ pitches beside a Herefordshire village has been refused permission – again.

Richard Florence had revised his earlier bid to create four “gypsy/traveller” pitches, each hosting one mobile home and one touring caravan, in an old orchard north of Orleton between Leominster and Ludlow, when he made a new planning application in January.

As before, a permanent “dayroom” was also proposed at the site, with facilities for cooking, dining, washing and bathing.

Seeking to address the reasons for the previous scheme’s refusal last year, he proposed improving the visibility splays onto the B4362, by “translocating” hedgerows – though it acknowledged that some hedging not in his ownership would also have to be cut back.

The council estimates a shortfall in the county of seven travellers’ pitches over the next five years, he pointed out.

But Herefordshire Council’s highways engineer said their previous objection “still stands”, as “in order to achieve the visibility splay… approximately one metre of the depth of the hedge would have to be removed, which would kill the hedge”.

Nor would there be safe pedestrian access from the site to facilities in the village, they said.

Welsh Water also objected that with already “insufficient capacity” to cope with foul and surface water drainage, “the increased demand may adversely affect our service to existing customers and future occupiers”.

Orleton Parish Council listed 16 objections, including that the proposal “fails to provide on-site facilities for children and fails to meet best practice for travellers’ sites in relation to storage and recycling or amenity buildings”.

Among 16 individual objections, neighbour James Turtle pointed out that previous applications at the site “have been rejected twice by the council and twice on appeal”, and claimed the grounds for these, over impact on the area’s rural character and ecology, and highway safety, “are still valid reasons for rejecting the current application”.

And village resident Graham Friswell claimed: “There are other traveller sites nearby that are not fully used.”

Planning officer Ollie Jones concluded that, despite the proposal making “a meaningful contribution towards addressing the identified shortfall in gypsy and traveller accommodation”, the road splays visibility issue had not been satisfactorily overcome.

Full planning permission was refused.